Mark Strauss talks about the early anti vaccination movement and little it has changed. They use many of the same arguments today.

More than 150 years ago, the British government made smallpox vaccination compulsory, resulting in a massive political backlash. Opponents used tactics and arguments that are familiar today. If anything, the contemporary anti-vaxxer has regressed even further.

Widespread vaccination had begun in the early 1800s, after Edward Jenner presented his findings to the Royal Society of London in 1796, detailing his success in preventing smallpox by inoculation with infectious material. The Vaccination Act of 1853 made vaccination compulsory for all infants — parents who refused could face stiff fines and even imprisonment.

Widespread resistance began almost immediately, with violent riots in several towns — some of which didn’t even enforce the law. A group called the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League was formed, publishing journals and pamphlets about the dangers of vaccination.

HannibaltheVictor13 an archeology, anthropology, and history student created a great video on why people fail to understand both why history is important, but also why being a historian is much harder than many people think. Its primarily just audio but Its a great video lecture to watch, (or just listen to) and also it gives you some important things to think about.

HannibaltheVictor13re: #3 Jim D Yah that wasn't what was said. How you even got that out of the video I'm not sure. Mathematics follows predictable modeling that can be checked to be correct. History follows not such path. It makes ...

So much for the common claim by Islamophobes that mainstream or moderate Muslims never protest the extremists. Here is yet another example of that occurring, which the anti Muslim wingnuts expects us to believe never occurs. David O’leary reports.

Refugees cross into Turkey from Syria to escape fighting in the border town of Kobani. Picture: Getty

SCOTTISH Muslims are to ­stage an anti-Islamic State protest rally in Edinburgh condemning the group’s “heinous activities”, with thousands expected to ­attend.

The demonstration will take place on 2 November at The Mound in Edinburgh and is organised by the city’s Muslim community, who say it will be “open to members of all communities” who wish to voice their opposition to the barbaric acts of IS and condemn the murders of David Haines and Alan Henning.

Organised by award- winning restaurateur Matin Khan, speakers confirmed for the day include Labour MPs Sheila Gilmore and David Hamilton, with more to be ­announced.

Khan is the owner of Itihaas restaurant in Dalkeith and the current Scottish Curry Chef of the Year, and says he was moved to organise the peace rally in an attempt to show that IS “do not in any way represent Islam”. He said: “The IS beheading of David Haines and Alan Henning and the posting of their actions on the internet is barbaric.

Liverpool have deleted a tweet wishing their Jewish supporters a happy new year after it was met with a series of antisemitic messages on the club’s official account.

The club marked Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year in the Hebrew calendar, with a tweet on Friday that read: “Liverpool FC would like to wish all our Jewish supporters around the world a happy new year. #RoshHashanah”. However, the tweet was removed several hours later.

Liverpool have recognised various religious events and holidays on social media and was one of several clubs to mention Rosh Hashanah on Twitter on Friday. Kick It Out, football’s equality and inclusion organisation, contacted Anfield officials having received a number of complaints about the antisemitic abuse on the club’s site. It has also reported the alleged hate crimes to True Vision, the police’s online reporting facility, and investigations could follow.

A spokesperson for Kick It Out said: “It is encouraging that a football club recognises these holidays and religious landmarks - Liverpool did the same for Ramadan - but extremely sad when a club does that in a proactive manner and gets these responses. Premier League clubs appeal to supporters around the world and it would have been nice for Liverpool’s Jewish supporters to see this message from their club, that’s the bigger issue. It should be welcomed that clubs are doing this is in a proactive manner.”

Of course the anti Muslim “counter Jihad” will claim that they’re only “pretending” to be againsts violence and extremism, without any real evidence, other than the fact that they’re Muslims. Regardless this is a good thing.

Cheeki Rafiki, a sailing yacht from Southampton, was returning home to the UK with a crew of four, following a successful race in the Caribean. On Thursday Skipper Andrew Bridge reported that the boat was taking on water. The experienced crew believed that the situation was stable but amended their course to head for the group of islands, Azores. On Friday morning the yacht training and charter firm Stormforce Coaching lost all contact with them.

The US Coast Guard has done a fantastic job searching for the crew, but we are asking that they just give them a bit more time. It is reported that two consecutive signals were picked up from personal beacons indicating that they had made it to the life raft. They deserve a chance to be found, please help by signing this petition to ask the US Coastguard to please search again.

These are thoroughly trained yachtsmen who might well survive for days in their lifeboat or the overturned hull spotted by a cargo vessel, so there is still hope.

The petition is here, presently on 25,000 signatures but perhaps LGFers can push it up some more. x

It is a milestone in politics; but it coincides with a milestone in economics. The state visit by the Irish president Michael Higgins comes at a time when his country’s economy is at last creating jobs in solid numbers, a sign that the recovering world economy is pulling even those countries most savaged by the recession back to growth.

Ireland is fascinating not just because it happens to be the UK’s nearest neighbour, with a land border, all the links of language and culture, and be the UK’s fifth largest export market. It is an extreme example of many of the trends in the world economy over the past decade.

Ireland has been, in proportion to its size, the most successful country in the world at attracting inward investment, and through the 2000-2007 period the fastest-growing developed economy. It had just about the most extreme property boom, and the most extreme subsequent collapse. It had proportionately the biggest banking crash, and - Greece apart - the severest collapse in GDP. And now it is the first of the eurozone’s troubled fringe to start perking up, for the flip from stagnation to growth seems at last to have occurred.

But job growth is now solid at 60,000 last year, roughly the same as the UK proportionate to the two economies, and the Central Bank forecasts unemployment to fall from 13.1 per cent last year to 11.3 per cent this year, and to 10.5 per cent in 2015.

People will try and draw specific conclusions from this, and in Europe one of the messages you hear is that austerity works. That does, however, ignore the human, social and regional costs - the fact that so many people had to leave the country to get jobs, the debt burden on people who bought homes near the top of the market, and the minimal recovery outside the Dublin agglomeration.

A wider and perhaps more useful conclusion is that the rising tide of the world economy is floating all boats. Yesterday we had the new forecasts from the International Monetary Fund, where the headline was another boost to the UK, which it now expects to grow by 2.9 per cent this year. Less noticed was the reasonably upbeat tone for the world economy as a whole - slightly slower in the emerging world, slightly faster in the developed.

The UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee has recently delivered a report on the state of climate knowledge and communication in the country. Although it doesn’t spare the government from criticism, the report notes that most of the public looks to the BBC to provide authoritative coverage on science. The report concludes that in this case, the BBC’s news division is failing its readership and viewers. Rather than providing authoritative information, the BBC is succumbing to false balance, and its director of Editorial Policy and Standards gave testimony on science coverage that appears to be incoherent.

In the UK, the major political parties largely accept the scientific evidence for climate change; official skepticism is limited to a few parties on the conservative fringe. As such, the report starts with the acceptance of the conclusions reached by the majority of scientists: the Earth is warming, and humans are the main factor driving that warming.

Nepal’s most prominent crusader for equal rights to sexual minorities, Sunil Babu Pant, is among the record 278 nominees for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Pant, a former MP and Nepal’s first openly gay politician, is one of the several gay rights activists and organizations nominated alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin who is known for his anti-gay stance.

“I didn’t believe the news at first, but when many said “it’s true” and sent emails of congratulations, it made me happy,” Pant wrote to HT from UK where he is taking care of his unwell partner.

The 42-year-old founded Blue Diamond Society, Nepal’s biggest organization fighting for rights of lesbians, gays, bi-sexual and transgendered (LGBTs) and is responsible for the 2007 Supreme Court ruling which directed Nepal government to grant equal status to sexual minorities.

These days LGBTs in Nepal can get their citizenship certificates, passports, voter identity cards and other important documents by enlisting themselves as third gender instead of calling themselves male or female.

According to Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), gay rights activists Igor Kochetkov from Russia, Frank Mugisha of Uganda and International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association are also among the nominees.

All of them have been nominated by Norwegian MPs Anette Trettebergstuen and Hakon Haugli.

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Justice Department Spokesman Marc Raimondi released the following statement Tuesday: "Three documents - a criminal Information, a plea agreement, and a statement of facts - were filed today in the United States District Court for the Western District of ...

Morgan Whitaker exposes where wingnuts are getting their "information" on "the evil, un-American, Kenyan, Marxist Muslim" Obama. This story is about a year old, but its still relevant today. David Jackson, of Belmont, NC, does not like President Obama. He ...

This is a random post, but since I did a little bit of research, I decided to write up a short summary that may be useful for others. Ever since the 1988 carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin showed ...

What, precisely, is this woman's major malfunction? For going on 30 years, she has been the target of every strange conspiracy theory that the half-bright mind of man can dream up. She knows they're out there, pining to have ...

Jeb Bush has been adamant that he will not switch his positions on two issues, immigration and Common Core standards, that will generate conservative opposition in the Republican primaries. But he just made a major concession to conservatives on ...

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Samsung over what it says is the recording of private conversations in homes through the company's television sets. The privacy rights group filed a complaint with ...

From the National Center for Science Education House File 272, introduced in the Iowa House of Representatives on February 17, 2015, and referred to the House Committee on Education, would, if enacted, prevent Iowa from adopting the Next Generation ...

When journalist Chai Jing released her documentary on China's air pollution, she probably could not have dreamed that her message would resonate so widely while boosting the share prices of so many "environmentally friendly" companies. On Monday, more than ...

I went out to the post box and found the latest issue of Nat Geo, March 2015, there with this cover photo: And the headlines: THE WAR ON SCIENCE:Climate Change does not existEvolution never happenedThe Mood Landing was fakeVaccinations can ...

Buried somewhere deep inside the code of some Web browsers and websites is an old, weak version of encryption that can easily be cracked. And the only reason it exists is because of bad U.S. policies that have since ...

Curt Schilling showed a young punk you don't mess with his daughter on twitter. Schilling's fond paternal congratulations were met with "tweets with the word rape, bloody underwear and pretty much every other vulgar and defiling word you could likely ...

In this era of raw nerves, protests and increased tensions, Americans really want leadership. It's natural for the public and the media to desperately seek out examples that appear to affirm that our nation is changing for the better. ...

By this process, you can arrive at a conclusion like this: To win the War on Women, you better put a ring on it. At CPAC, conservatives dedicated an entire panel to "The Future of Marriage." One could be ...

Earlier today interested Redditors posed questions to Poitras and Greenwald in Los Angeles, while Snowden posted from Moscow. A rare opportunity for average people to directly communicate with the (in)famous leaker.See the entire discussion HERE Redditor masondog13 asks: What's the ...

Wait a minute... watching Fox News and the Republican talking heads I learned that all Muslims are bad bad bad and in no way can Islam be interpreted as any sort of peaceful religion. news.yahoo.com OSLO (Reuters) - More than ...

For the last three years it's been my privilege to help coach a dedicated group of young women who have founded the first Women's Flat-Track Roller Derby league in Israel. They've learned, trained, fought, and worked unbelievably hard to bring ...

Added bold is all mine. this was an awkward way to go about gun control anyway. It clearly impacts the law abiding far more than felons, and is by that definition inefficient and intrusive at best. Gonna have to do ...